Your quote "if this mom really wanted to help her young son, then why doesn't she have some paper showing he is in the process of getting his citizenship," proves that your arguments are based on what you believe to be true about the system currently in place, as opposed to what the laws governing it actually dictate is possible. As was referenced in the article, Danny's mom was more than happy to produce her identification. She has status, but she doesn't have the ability to petition for her son's status because she is not yet a Permanent Resident or US Citizen. Danny has no way of applying for citizenship. If he were to attempt to initiate the process of securing a visa now, he would have to leave the USA, despite the fact that he has lived here since he was 7 years old. Danny does not have a fake ID. He never stole anyone's Social Security number. He doesn't sell drugs, or belong to a gang. He works for cash diligently following IRS guidelines stating that he cannot earn more than $600 from any one employer. He knows this law and follows it to the letter because he hopes that immigration reform will pass one day, and he wants to be in good standing. As is mentioned in the article, Danny applied for deferred action so he could receive prosecutorial discretion and protection from deportation. This meant that he had to spend his own money on a background check -- a background check that came up clean.

Your statement "follow the law and continue to work at improving the immigration laws to help make the process less cumbersome," once again offers an impression of the system in place that does not mesh with reality. There is not one process that everyone follows. There is no such thing as one line, or one set of rules that apply to everyone. If Danny had been born in a country that qualifies for the visa lottery, say Belgium, he could sign himself up for a drawing and automatically win a Green Card. It wouldn't matter if he were an unemployed high school dropout. He could simply luck himself into Permanent Residency. But Danny was born in Mexico, and therefore Danny doesn't qualify for the visa lottery. If Danny's mother were from anywhere in Europe, she would have received her Permanent Residency already, and it would have taken around 3 to 5 years for her to secure status for her son. But since she is from Latin America, there is no scenario that would allow her to secure her son's status in anything less than 17 to 23 years. Danny's mom could get a PhD, and an MD, and discover the cure to cancer, or become a multimillionaire through her genius and initiative. She would still have a longer path to citizenship, and would find herself unable to sponsor her son in the same amount of time as the average French, English, or German immigrant. It makes no sense to ignore the merit of an individual simply because of his or her country of origin. The system in place creates huge backlogs, and fails to apply/enforce one set of rules and burdens. This is one of the reasons reform is so urgently needed. Read more: http://www.scpr.org/blogs/multiamerican/2013/02/01/12336/immigrant-visa-backlogs-how-do-both-reform-plans-p/

Last, but most certainly not least, this argument that undocumented Americans are reaping a series of benefits is wholly, completely, utterly 100% false. There are zero, zilch, zip, no means for undocumented folks to collect Social Security, or get subsidized healthcare, or receive temporary assistance for needy families, (TANF a.k.a. welfare) or access unemployment benefits. Yes, Danny attended public schools. But the Supreme Court in Plyler v. Doe stated that public education should not and cannot be denied to minors residing in the US, regardless of whether or not they have Social Security numbers. So according to the Supreme Court, neither Danny, nor his family, are guilty of stealing anything from you, me, or any other taxpayer. And once again, it bears repeating that Danny's mom has a work visa so she is paying into Social Security, etc., as well as filing federal and state taxes annually, despite the fact that is is not eligible to get any of this money back, or able to make use of any of the public benefits her tax dollars help to subsidize. Immigrants both documented and undocumented are making far greater financial contributions to this country than most people are aware of, or are willing to acknowledge. In fact, undocumented Americans are contributing $11.2 billion annually in tax revenue to the states and municipalities in which they reside. Read more: http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/unauthorized-immigrants-pay-taxes-too

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scored the Senate's immigration reform bill and stated quite clearly that immigration reform would contribute an additional $1 trillion in GDP growth over the next decade, an additional $1 trillion in deficit reduction over the next two decades. If you don't want 159,000 additional new jobs each and every year, Social Security to be restored, etc., you are free to do so. But there is no empirical (quantitative) evidence, or even peer-reviewed qualitative research, to justify the notion you've advanced that immigrants are a burden, and those who are currently undocumented -- 40% of whom entered the US and established residency here with documentation -- deserve to be eternally labeled as criminals and treated thusly.

Let's start with the actual facts. This young man, no matter how innocent and good he is, he is still by all aspects of the Law under which we all live under, is an Illegal. The word again, is ILLEGAL. I happen to be friends with a good bit of people from Mexico, and other countries who have gone through the Immigration process and are now legal citizens of the United States. Some are still in the process but they are following the law.

If this mom really wanted to help her young son, then why doesn't he have some paper showing he is in the Process of getting his Citzenship.

I will say that if these particular policeman actually did and said all this then they are total jerks and were discriminating so they are also not correct. They apparently had no real reason to stop the young man and were actually harassing him by picking him out due to the color of his skin, or that he looked hispanic, or whatever. They were wrong.

Now 2 wrongs do not make a right. The color of one's skin is really a misnomer. There are many many hispanics who are not dark skinned but very light / caucasian looking. So to use the 'color' of one's skin is a crutch used by so many do gooders to make us all look bad and uncaring.

When a law is broken, there is a penalty to pay. This young man, no matter what, has broken a law. It is not his fault that he has been in this Country for as many years as he has going to public schools, etc., but it is the fault of his mother or mother/father who let him live here this long without ever going through the process of obtaining citizenship.

One of our dear friends came to this country back in 1986. She became a naturalized citizen in 1991. She is now running for US Congress. She is a proud American very proud of this Country and wants to do what she can to make it better to clean the corruption out.

Immigration reform is definitely needed. I believe the majority of us all, no matter our skin color, ethnicity, race, whatever, we all believe immigration needs to be fixed. It takes way to long for one who applies for citizenship to get their citizenship. I now people from New Zealand who have been in 'process' for 15 yrs and had to do the go back home every 6 months because of the way the immigration laws are right now. Yet, there are those who have gotten their citizenship in 10 yrs or less; some took 20 yrs. So, yes, it does need changed but not to the point that there is nothing but complete amnesty - not having to go through a legal process to legally become a naturalized citizen. This is true in any Country. Try going to live in Mexico. As an 'illegal' you have no rights to property. Go read their constitution, and how they look at people coming into their country.

Try going to another country and try to get the benefits that we have been allowing illegals to get, and/or that they think and believe they should have even though they are illegal. Are we to let people just come into this country illegally and get all the same benefits that we as American Citizens work for on a daily basis. You don't get that anywhere else. Why are they fighting so hard to stay illegal? Why are they fighting so hard to have all we have just given to them on a silver platter without going through the legal process of immigration to obtain citizenship or even a green card; something that says they came here and are here legally.

Do you or anyone else walk into a store, pick up clothing, or shoes, handbags, or if in a grocery store pick up groceries of all types, put them in your cart and then just walk out without paying? Isn't this against the law? Taking something that is not legally yours. Should you not be punished for doing something against the law?

Isn't taking someone elses Social Security number to get a job stealing? and lying? Are they not crimes committed, are they not against the law? Should not the person performing identity theft be punished?

No one is against anyone coming into this Country to be free, to have the dreams that we all have who already live here, to achieve, become better people, to get better schooling, have a better life, no one is denying anyone those rights- we're just saying to do it legally. Do it the way so many immigrants have done for so many years. They applied for citizenship and followed the law to become a US Citizen. Even those people who have done so legally according to the law are not in favor of those who come into this Country illegally, against the law, and expect to receive the benefits that so many immigrants worked so hard to become legal citizens.

While the immigration laws are on the books the way they are, follow the law and continue to work at improving the immigration laws to help make the process less cumbersome, and be completed quicker say within 5 yrs vs 10-15-20 yrs.

Where to begin? Danny's parents are not criminals. They are documented US residents who would like to sponsor their son's Permanent Residency but are prevented from doing so by the broken system currently in place. Danny is an undocumented American. And that is -- to your point -- the most honest, forthright description one could possibly give for a young man who has lived twice as many years in the US, graduated from a US high school, and is pursuing a college degree as he is able to pay for one -- without access to any federally subsidized loans, and without being recognized on paper, as being exactly the same as any of his US born peers. Your claim that I am somehow lying about Danny in order to exploit him is laughable. I do not stand to gain professionally, financially, or in any other way by sharing his story -- other than in the way that we would all benefit should a path to citizenship be afforded to undocumented Americans like him. I would suggest that if you are concerned about racism you should question why it is that a family of high school dropouts from Belgium can achieve family reunification in the US in 3 years, while it takes a family of Filipino PhDs 23 years to do the same. The legacy of racial prejudice is connected to the immigration system in place in terms of enforcement as well. 85% of those who have been deported (400,000+ people every year over the course of the last four years) are from Latin American countries. But 85% of immigrants today are not from Latin America. In fact, for the last several years Asian immigrants have outnumbered those from any other region. Further, as I mentioned in a previous comment 40% of undocumented Americans entered and established residency with status, but have been unable to renew it. If the enforcement system were evenly applied, persons with visa overstays would make up a larger percentage of those who have been targeted for deportation. Last, and most certainly not least, we cannot ignore the history of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese Internment, and the Repatriation programs targeting Mexican families in the 1930s and 1950s. Any person who is concerned with the notion of racial justice and the legacies of institutionalized prejudice should be given pause by the consistent "othering" that is applied to Latino as well as Asian American and Pacific Islanders in the US. Too many in the US look upon Latino and AAPI faces and automatically assume that these faces belong to immigrants, when Latino and AAPI Americans have been in the US since the beginning. One need only look up the Naturalization Act of 1790 in order to corroborate this fact. As we head toward 2050, the year in which people of color will outnumber whites in the US, it is important to think about what needs to be done to abandon the pitting of one group against another. The future is not a zero sum game, and we can afford everyone an excellent education, the opportunity to earn enough to provide for our families, and live in a society with institutions that reflect our diverse identities, and achieve gender parity. I would argue, that the belief in this possibility is, above all else, what makes Danny and DREAMers like him, as American as anyone could ever possibly be.

If Danny was brought her by his criminal parents, he has my sympathies but his current problems are largely the result of people like you who have encouraged illegal immigration and fought to destroy any meaningful immigration law or enforcement of same. If people like you weren't so racist and exploitive of people like Danny, he'd probably be on a legal citizenship track now.

Confucius said that the key to good government was to name things honestly. Danny is not an "undocumented American." That's a lie. It's marketing spin. Its a phrase intended to discuss the fact that illegal immigrants willful and knowing break the law. It makes a mockery of all law. Danny or his parents broke the law. He's not missing or some box wasn't checked off. They broke the law, your lying about it to exploit them. End of story.

If you want to talk about "undocumented Americans" I know a young man whose parents brought him over from the Ukraine in the early 90s. Grew up here and did a tour in Iraq but owing to his parents mistake in filing some paperwork 20+ year ago, he's not a citizen. I never see anyone trying to fix those kinds of mistake and the "Dream Act" seem utterly indifferent to them.

The Dream Act is about importing Democratic voters. Since the 1840s and onward, the Democrats have increasingly depended on having voters from peasant cultures where patronage rules everything. The entire democratic message has always boiled down to "you can't trust your fellow Americans because of religion, race, class, region etc" and you can never make it on your own, you've got have politicians to hook you in." The Democrats invented Jim Crow, All-white Unions, Emmigration exclusion, corrupt big city machines (with the mob as muscle) all based on the idea that America is a hateful place where only the Democratic party protects you. In the 60s all they did was swap "people of color" for "white" and then carried on as before. There message is constantly one of mistrust and hatred for ones fellow Americans.

That message that your alone and have to be connect to powerful patrons makes perfect sense from people coming from places like Ireland, Italy Eastern Europe etc where things actually work that way. The problem is, after a couple of generations, people figure out that hey, you can trust your neighbors and you can make it on your own, so the Democrats need a new batch of people from patronage cultures. If it weren't for illegal immigration the Democrats would never win in New Mexico, Arizona or California.

The Dream Act is also racist a hell. You never see any Hispanics saying, "Hey, its not fair we get automatic citizenship just because we can walk to America. Lets say everyone, African, Asian, Indian etc that can hop a boat or plane can come here." Nope they pop an artery at the thought. Yeah, its all the great American dream until some other people of color start immigrating in numbers.

Not to mention the whole, "Jobs Americans are to lazy to do," is really just code for "jobs black people are to lazy to do." or perhaps even worse, "jobs that are beneath the dignity of any Americans so we've got to import some little brown peasants to do them."

If were not going to bother to enforce immigration laws, why have them? If Danny deserves to be an American, why not anyone else in the world? If Danny is to be rewarded for breaking our immigration laws, how can we punish anyone else?

Just open the borders to everyone who can stagger across. What's so special about Mexicans? Why not ship load after ship load of Chinese? They're hard working, don't eat much and there is apparently an infinite number of low skill, low paid jobs available here. Hell, lets invite the entire planet.

Face it. This is cynical political exploitation of the poorest people in the world. The brutality and selfishness of it all is exceeded only by the horror of the whole Housing Projects fiasco of 50 years ago. This one fills communities with poor, low-skill workers who depress wages across the board (except for upper class democrats of course) It traps everyone else in at the bottom of the income scale because there an infinate supply of cheap labor always flowing in to keep wages down. No matter how hardworking, illegal immigrants or their children will be forced to depend on the democrats for public assistance and vote robotically Democrat or starve.

Just remember. Danny's predicament is your fault. You and your intellectual predecessors created his dilemma by your self interested wrecking of the most liberal immigration laws in human history. Now you want to wreck what is left and create more Danny's down the line.

Confuscious never said that the key to good government is to name things honestly. I doubt that you have read or studied any philosophers.

Danny IS an undocumented american.

the article states "I showed them photos of events where Danny's artwork had been distributed, posted on The Dream Is Now campaign's social media pages. I showed them my driver's license, and explained why he didn't yet have one. I didn't share any new information. But my citizenship and skin color made everything I was saying credible—even though Danny and I both spoke to the officers in English, using the same words, and were able to produce the same photos and anecdotal evidence....this doesn't bother you? do you know why this happened, police believing the white guy who said everything danny said, and that made it ok? that is just one aspect of racism, ask any black teen or black young adult if they have been in a similar situation.

You said "If you want to talk about "undocumented Americans" I know a young man whose parents brought him over from the Ukraine in the early 90s. Grew up here and did a tour in Iraq but owing to his parents mistake in filing some paperwork 20+ year ago, he's not a citizen. I never see anyone trying to fix those kinds of mistake and the "Dream Act" seem utterly indifferent to them... After reading this tidbit, i had to stop and find out if undocumented americans are allowed to join america's military and the answer is no. the undocumented immigrants can get a card to let them work in the country, and want obama to expand the definition of work to include serving in the military. i'm not sure how this ukranian young man without documents served in the military. did you make this up? according to your views that entire family deserves to be deported, in your eyes they are not undocumented americans but illegal immigrants, criminals. they broke the law by immigrating to america without papers and in 20 years have never applied for citizenship. i swear you make no sense at all.

"The Dream Act is about importing Democratic voters." Really?

The democrats did not invent jim crow. How are you connecting jim crow with immigrants? You know nothing of the history that caused jim crow. Jim crow had nothing to do with immigrants and you sully the memories of those who fought for civil rights.

Do you know the difference between immigration and emmigration?
Do you understand the bill of rights? You can't pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, so what is emmigration exclusion?

The Democrat philosophy is that " America is a hateful place where only the Democratic party protects you. Are you really going to say that democrats think America is a hateful place? So what are democrat children going to war for? Why would you want to defend a hateful place? This was a very stupid comment.

"The Dream Act is also racist a hell. You never see any Hispanics saying, "Hey, its not fair we get automatic citizenship just because we can walk to America. Lets say everyone, African, Asian, Indian etc that can hop a boat or plane can come here." Nope they pop an artery at the thought. Yeah, its all the great American dream until some other people of color start immigrating in numbers". Sorry, but this paragraph makes absolutely no sense. You really do not have a clue about what racism is.

"Not to mention the whole, "Jobs Americans are to lazy to do," is really just code for "jobs black people are to lazy to do." Are you saying that blacks are not american? Being a migrant worker is not an easy job. Working in the hot sun, doing back breaking work so you and your family can stuff your faces. Again you show an amazing lack of knowledge of history and politics.

" If Danny is to be rewarded for breaking our immigration laws, how can we punish anyone else?" How and what is Danny being rewarded for?

"Just open the borders to everyone who can stagger across. What's so special about Mexicans? Why not ship load after ship load of Chinese? They're hard working, don't eat much and there is apparently an infinite number of low skill, low paid jobs available here." They don't eat much, isn't that a bit stereotypical?

Then you go and blast the housing project bill. That too has nothing to do with immigration
I read the entire bill. It doesn't mention political parties at all.

Please explain what upper class democrats are?

" It traps everyone else in at the bottom of the income scale because there an infinate supply of cheap labor always flowing in to keep wages down. No matter how hardworking, illegal immigrants or their children will be forced to depend on the democrats for public assistance and vote robotically Democrat or starve." Where do you come up with these ideas?

Repubs have a big problem with comprehension of any article. To read and understand 20 pages of double spaced type is difficult for them. The last two plus pages are references. References back up your facts, and we know that repubs don't operate on facts and truth, you'd rather make things up and distort history and thump the christan bible to make yourselves feel good and righteous. You get your news from fox news, not from reading many articles on the situation, both sides of a story and different perspectives. You are vastly uneducated.

Your last paragraph shows how you feel about people with intelligence. you would prefer that we all be mediocre thinkers like you. face it, people with intelligence scare the hell out of repubs because repubs only live in the here and now, cannot think outside the box, are not well read, have little minds and are extremely racist from lack of or poor education.

Last of all, repubs blame everything under the sun. If Danny's predicament is a fault, it's because of uneducated, small minded, racist people like you in our government.

>A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve. If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.
> — Confucius, Analects, Book XIII, Chapter 3, verses 4-7, translated by James Legge[3]

Confuscius cogently observed that words are just symbols and that for verbal thought and communication to produce a correct outcome the symbols must map onto physical reality as closely as possible. In other words, Confucius was warning about the dangers of marketing spin.

**Whats really interesting here is that despite your complete ignorance of Confucianism, you were so arrogant and bigoted you couldn't even bother to do a quick google check to see if you were wrong!**

It didn't even occur to you that I might know something you didn't, did it?

Kind of modern Leftism in a nutshell. Arrogant ignorance. The elite leftist just tell you that if you follow them blindly, that act alone is all you have to do to be intelligent and moral. As a result, you stop learning and challenging and ***testing*** yourself. You just think if you have the right ideology, your always correct and always better than someone who doesn't.

*I doubt that you have read or studied any philosophers*

I've studied all the major philosophers and a lot of the minor ones. Took 20 years to learn that 99% of it was all wrong. Turns out Aristole was wrong and you can't actually figure anything out by sitting on a stump and thinking about things real hard. Only empiricism provides actual knowledge.

For example, look at Kant and the whole century long debate about a priori knowledge all predicated on the premise that your brain couldn't even perceive something it had no knowledge of beforehand.

To bad they didn't know about neural networks. Would have saved a lot of wasted time.

*"Danny IS an undocumented american"*

No, by your own description Danny is a foreign national ,resident in the United States in knowing and deliberate violation of emigration and nationalization laws. Laws that every country in the world has. At best, he is a victim of a crime committed by his parents.

By your own description, Danny has never been an American either by birth or naturalization.

That is why the term "undocumented American" is a bald face lie. Using the term will never result in good government or social policy because, as Confucius pointed out, you can't base good policy on a lie.

Even if for the purposes of debate I adopt the corrupt phrase., How do we translate that into policy? How do we determine how long someone has to be in America before they are an American? Are those law abiding immigrants going through the years long naturalization process already Americans? Are people here on work visa's already Americans? If Canadian drives over the boarder to do some weekend shopping are they Americans? Is anyone standing on American soil automatically American?

Time precludes but I'll just contrast two of your statements:

"Really? The democrats did not invent jim crow."

"If Danny's predicament is a fault, it's because of uneducated, small minded, racist people like you in our government."

Honestly, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't read it. How can you be so ignorant of US history to not know that the Southern States were solidly Democrat until the 1970s? How can you not now that Jim Crow was completely a Democrat invention?

Then how can you have the gaul to call men uneducated and small minded?

The racist bit I expect. I understand that when pushed in a corner, you have no other repley.

"Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness" is a phrase in the Declaration of Independence, not the Bill of Rights.

You know, "We hold these truths to be self evident:That all men are created equal and are endowed with their creator with certain inalienable rights among these being life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and it is to secure these rights that governments are instituted among men and derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. "

But I could be wrong what with me being so uneducated and small minded and all.

i thank you for schooling me on confuscious and southern democrats. i will still stand by what i say. how come you didn't reply to how your illegal ukrainian, parents were illegal also joined the military and fought overseas when he couldn't? shouldn't the whole family have been deported?

it's interesting that you have decided that all philosophy is 99%wrong. since you have determined that it all wrong, why bother with it all?

i think their are many people who know more than i, and many that no less than i. i believe learning is shared ideas even if the other person's perspective is different.

citizenship is not just handed out to anyone who steps on american soil. there is a large and arduous road before a foreigner can become a citizen.

I've studied all the major philosophers and a lot of the minor ones. Took 20 years to learn that 99% of it was all wrong. Turns out Aristole was wrong and you can't actually figure anything out by sitting on a stump and thinking about things real hard. Only empiricism provides actual knowledge. i hope you have written to all the colleges you know to tell them they can save money by not offering such courses because according to you, it's 99% bs anyway. it's interesting that you have decided that all philosophy is 99%wrong. since you have determined that it all wrong, why bother with it all?

Air compressor seems to be over heating in the hot little corner I am working on. Had to rig a cooling system so while that cools the unit down, I'll take a chance to get bite to eat and explain why Democrats were and are still, the party of racism.

But first, a brief history of the concept of Race and Racsim.

Firstly, you have to understand why anyone bothered to come up with the concept of racism at all. People conquered and enslaved each other just fine with no such elaborate rationalization as race, racism or racial superiority. Although it is a big problem today, the distant past sucked so bad that racism represented and actual moral improvement in how people treated each other.

Prior to racism, the vast majority of humanity lived in societies ruled by a class of warriors who owed their positions in society solely to their ability to kill better than anyone else. In almost all cases, the warrior class originated as external invaders from an entirely different culture e.g. Saxons v Normans. Monguls v Chinese, Rashputs v Hindus, Aztecs v Mayans. In each case, the victors became the new "nobles" and the loser got either wiped out or pushed down a rung.

The killer class developed the ethos that the farmers were either subhuman or at the very least vastly inferior and that they owed little or now moral obligation to them in the least. It was the universal pattern that the killer classes felt far more identity with distant killers than they did the farmers working right outside their window. Artisans were tolerated as necessary and merchants actively despised as the worse social glass of all.(Usually they were an actual external ethic group e.g. Jews in Europe, Armenians in the Middle East etc)

The killers of every locality saw themselves as an extended family usually all coming from some divine ancestor or mandate to rule over everyone else. Of course, the entire structure of every unit of society from kings down to beggars was family based.) Lineage, not location, physical appearance. wealth, intelligence, education etc was all that mattered.

Because of a confluence of events, literacy, blackpowder warfare and mass armies, mercantilism etc, the killers suddenly found themselves needing the actual active loyalty the farmers, artisans and merchant traders. Eventually what happened was they created the concept of a "race" which really just a type of extended family. Originally, "race" belonged to specific ethnic groups within Europe itself. Buy creating an ethos that everyone in the polity from the most poor and powerless to the wealthiest and most powerful were all part of kin group, they extended the implicit moral obligations of family to the entirety of the society. Now wars and other forms of competition weren't just between a thin layer of killers on the top of a polity but increasingly the entire population. That's how a small population like the Dutch Republic could take on almost the whole of the rest of Europe and win.

Note that racism wasn't actually involved in the reintroduction of slavery in the western world. For the first two centuries that Westerners bought slaves from Africans, they did so solely because they had the money and power to do. The Portuguese and Spanish treated their own peasants like cattle so treating some vastly different people like cattle didn't require any moral leap. (It was also at that time that the Catholic Church became the first organization to even pause and consider whether enslaving vastly different people was okay. Unfortunately, money won out but at least they considered it might be wrong. No one else in any civilization prior had.)

Conversely, slaves were the primary trade commodity in Africa because Africans only saw moral obligations only in terms of lineages. You were had moral obligations to your actual extended family. They didn't think that the people over the river were in anyway related so they captured them and sold them. That was actually the normal pattern across the world outside of Northern Europe.

So, I get the air compressor fixed, run a line of molding and the brad nailer dies. I'm beginning to think that this little project is cursed.

( The history of racism part two

I should first make a note here that this about the functional history of racsim i.e. why people created and employed the various arguments/rationalizations about racism in the first place.

Now the origins of the concept of race did not mean a sense of equality. Quite the opposite. The nobles were the elders, everyone else the children is the big family.

By the mid-16th century in the Anglo Dutch world the evolution of the Corporation from a form of town governance to a means funding and organizing large scale projects like building dykes and canals or creating long range trading ships, have trigger a dramatic rise in the need for meritocracy. It turned out that is was increasingly more important that the guy navigating the ship or building the dyke knew what he was doing instead of being of the correct lineage.

Artillery became important on the battlefield around this time as well and artillerist also had to be extremely technically competent.

All together this created a class of highly productive and very necessary people all from the wrong classes/lineages. These vital individuals began to agitate for a society of political equals with merit advancement for everyone. This was usually couched in terms of the innate concept of Christian equality. If all men are equal before God, why not the State?

The problem was that has western world grew and became more diverse, the drive for political equality threatened to disrupt the "large family" metaphor of racism. If everyone was equal then and everyone could advance on merit, then someone from Africa or China had as much right to a job or government position as anyone for any Europe nation.

They solved this problem with the creation of modern racism that held that entire groups of people were essentially a different sort of critter and didn't count towards political equality. In some rationalization, people of color where depicted as being akin to domestic animals. You might care about them and for them but they weren't your equals.

The trouble was that the as technology increased in complexity and scale and world trade grew, so did the need fore more and more meritocracy. It's no accident that the anti-slavery movement began with the entrepreneurial classes. The merchant Quakers of Pennsylvania were the first people and the first jurisdiction in the world to outlaw slavery for everyone. The rest of the merit driven American north soon followed. In England, the rising new class of industrialist soon followed suit.

It's no accident that slavery persisted in the pre-industrial American south. The deep south was not a meritocratic society. It was all about your lineage.

After the Civil War and the rise of the steamship. Poor whites all over America began to face economic competition from people of color. In the south it was the south and north it was freed blacks, in the west it was immigration from Asia. Fortunately for them, the theory of evolution had arrived and it seemed to provide a perfect rational for privileging lower class whites over everyone else.

And that is when the Democrats went seriously nutjob racist everywhere.

Well, the damn air compressor won't run on the extension cord over to the other house so while I've got it back home here filling up, I will continue your free education.

"it's interesting that you have decided that all philosophy is 99%wrong. since you have determined that it all wrong, why bother with it all?"

Well, to start, all philosophers wrote their philosophical viewpoints within the context of a larger contemporary debate. So, simplistically, for every philosopher whom history remembers there was at least one other philosopher whom history judge wrong (and probably forgot unless you dig.)

So, just on that basis 50% of all philosophers were wrong.

However, the numbers are even worse than that. There are less than 500 major western philosophers dating from classical time but there were tens for every one of those, there were dozens, hundreds and thousands of competing contemporaries who are now largely ignored. So, the percentage of individual philosophers who might be considered worhtwhile out of all philosophers ever is probably around 5% or less.

Then we see that for every individual philosopher, really most of their ideas failed the test of time and only bits and pieces really of their total body of work was really useful. E.g. Confucius's concept of rectifying the names is obviously a valid point. His idea that society should be rigorously hierarchal and each person content to the station in the family and greater society they were born in... isn't.

Aristotle both advanced the eventual development of science by arguing for observation over tradition but he crippled it actually development for centuries by disdaining and even mocking actual experimentation e.g. his reject of Democraticus' deduction of the existance of atoms from the experiment of the water thief.

We should study philosophy primarily to study errors and to see why our forbearers went wrong. We need to study not only the philosophers' writing themselves but also their contemporary context and outcomes. Socrates, Aristotle and Plato were elitist anti-democracy political monsters whose ideas help destroy Athens, send Alexander the Great on a continent wide killing spree and justify authoritarianism up to the present day. You can't just read Nietzsche, you need to know how his ideas where used. Kind of need to know those things.

Welp, air compressor seems full. Off to put in some molding and sweat. Ugg.

Next will cover why the Democrats country wide were the party of racism all through the 19th century at the very least and arguably at still at it up to the present day

"i thank you for schooling me on confuscious and southern democrats. "

Hmmm, I not feeling the sincerity of that "thank you".

" how come you didn't reply to how your illegal ukrainian, parents were illegal also joined the military and fought overseas when he couldn't? shouldn't the whole family have been deported?"

Lack of time and space actually. Here's what I wrote last night on that particular issues.

//Start
"i had to stop and find out if undocumented americans are allowed to join america's military and the answer is no"[emp added]

Well of course not, imaginary beings are not allowed in the military, not after the whole elf versus unicorn Fort Bliss riot of 1907. Elfs, dwarves, unicorn, weidegos, "undocumented Americans" and all imaginary beings are all barred from service.

However, legal resident aliens can serve, which is what this young man legal status is. His parents are naturalized citizens. They just neglected to check off a box on some paperwork 20-something years ago. Neither he or his brother knew until they enlisted. They've been IIRC five years trying to get it sorted.

In this case there is no violation of the law. It's not against the law to fail to apply for citizenship for minor children and the minor children of native and naturalized American citizens have foreign resident status until at least the age of 18.

Since he filed with the Immigration and Naturalization Service immediately when he discovered the problem, his residency status is extended while the matter id adjudicated. That that takes years and years for some reason. (Probably aggravated by the difficulty of finding 20 year old documents and documents created in the Ukraine around the time of the fall of communism.)

My point is why are you and basically all Leftists spending the vast majority of your time talking about the "injustices" of illegal aliens, people who in the main knowing broke the law, instead of first fixing the existing naturalization process first?

Clearly, you don't actually care about the people involved nor the rule of law. Lawful immigrants won't benefit you politically but illegal immigrants will.

I've got another story. My wife had a co-worker whose parents came from Mexico and she was born shortly after. At the age of 33, she went to get a passport to go to Mexico for the first time in her life. Guess what the passport people discovered? Good old mom and dad told a little fib. They weren't naturalized and she was born in Mexico. Whoops. She is an innocent victim of her parents crime. She's got every ID in the book IIRC, her spouse was former military, but she's

Now she's going through the legal mill as well. It will take years. But hey, if they she had just intentionally broken the law, bingo, near instant citizen ship if you have your way.

Anyway, I also wanted to point out that you insistance of in using the deceitful term "undocumented American" is actually why you went wrong in your research. Since the term doesn't map onto any law, legal definition or even real world state of being, it is impossible to do any research or even anything using the lying term.

That is what Confucius was warning about. The term was engineered by some elite Leftists political marketing directors to confuse the public and make illegal immigrants sound like someone born here that just left their wallet at home.

Heh. I suppose a shop lifter is just an "undocumented owner" of the shoplifted item because really, all their lack is a receipt. Of course, the reason they don't have a reciept is that they skipped the whole, pay-for-item-and-get -a-receipt step. That of course, is the store's fault.

Sorry, I didn't actually reply in detail. I wrote 4096 words in response last night but thought that was an excessively long post so I trimmed it down the bare essentials. I will post snippet along the course of the day. That way you can respond to each particular subject.

Sorry, if I was a little testy but I was really tired. See, I'm a 48 year old Mac/iOS programmer by trade (an biologist by education) but I'm just recovering from a year's long debilitating illness. A friend of mine ask if I could fix up a rental duplex for her and, since I grew up on the farm, have a wide range of manual skills and like to get my hands dirty, I said sure. I thought, 2-4 days at most and it would be good physical therapy.

But, I was far more deconditioned than I thought and moreover, my manual skills had degraded so I'm working really slowly and there was a lot of water damage that no one knew about so the job kept getting bigger and bigger. Now it's been three weeks solid (except 3 days when I got sick again) of manual labor in an unconditioned house in 95 degree Texas summer heat with 20%-80% humidity. Plus, I'm delaying important programming to fulfill my promise to my friend and I'm worried that I won't meet her move-in deadline.

Then, last night, I come in from working from 8am-10pm in the heat, making frustratingly slow progress and drenched in sweat dust and paint...and read your arrogant, snippy and disturbingly ignorant reply.

Do you have any idea how stupid you look burning hundreds of words ranting about how stupid and uneducated I am supposed to be when you've made two colossal errors of unambiguous fact? Don't you owe me at least a civil apology?

More importantly, since you've been unambiguously wrong about two issues of fact and I have been right, shouldn't you admit that I am likely better educated and generally more knowledgable about history and the world than you are?

Oh, and please format your post in a paragraphs and at least use quotation marks for quotes. These big blocks of unformatted text hard to read. Don't be so egocentric. Remember, you write so others can read, not so you can save time writing.

Undocumented Americans already pay federal, state, and local taxes. In 2010 alone, states and municipalities attributed $11.2 billion in tax revenue to their undocumented residents. In addition, your claim that immigrants are a drain on the economy and social services is factually false. Please review the CBO score of the bill currently before the Senate, or any other body of peer reviewed research. Immigrant Americans, including undocumented folks, put in more than they take out. As an example, even if all undocumented Americans were to become citizens, they would still receive 7% a year less in Social Security benefits than US born workers. Last, but most certainly not least, your statement "illegals are illegals," is both offensive and radically inaccurate. Re: offensiveness, here is a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmz9cCF0KNE Re: inaccuracy, 40% of undocumented Americans entered the US and established residency here with documentation, but have been unable to renew it because of the dysfunctional system currently in place. Here's a good example: http://youtu.be/gq7qxiufm4Q

There is already a pathway to citizenship and countless numbers of Americans have followed it. Illegals are illegals. Period. Those who have worked through the proper channels, have entered the country legally, and paying taxes and living as Americans have earned the right. Many who are now illegally in this country will become legalized only to go on welfare and be a further drain on our over-stretched resources. If they want citizenship, they have the option to get it the way that is already laid out for them. Better yet - why not stay in their own countries and work to make them better places to live so they will want to stay in their own homelands and help them grow to greatness.

The ignorance in this comment is outstanding. You are luckily so privileged that you have never needed to work the numerous roadblocks to American citizenship, which is even more limited when you are non-white. Quit being xenophobic.

Hmm, I think sometimes we all use terms that we don't understand. I have a hard time understanding your use of "xenophobic" in response to a concern about dwindling American resources. You could use a term like "misinformed" if you feel there is no current path to citizen available and put forth supportable economic numbers that show revenue is greater than expenditures for illegal/undocumented immigrants. But I don't see how anyone has indicated abnormal fear or hatred of the strange or foreign. You might want to add some definitions to your "PC Lines and Phrases to Use for Liberals" handbook.

Hmm, Suzanne. While I appreciate your assumption that I am a blind liberal who relies on catchphrases and terms I do not quite grasp, my use of Xenophobic was deliberate and precise. I was referring to the statement that those who are in this country should return or stay in their homelands- as though reigning in cultural and state boundaries have ever been a reasonable fix. So to put your Dictionary.com definition to use, the abnormal fear or hatred comes when the us versus them mentality is espoused as reasonable, because the "illegals" should "go back to their own country" because they're only legal to "go on welfare and be a drain on resources", to quickly summarize what was stated. So yes, that is xenophobia- a fear that the unknown and non-"American" person who is in the country.

But I understand that sometimes we all try and act as authorities on concepts we do not quite understand. Along with online dictionary resources, I would recommend doing some reading on citizenship, nationalism, and the state to understand why this is xenophobic and not simply "misinformed", focusing on authors such as Jyoti Puri, Benedict Anderson, Geoff Eley, Ronald Suny, and Anthony Giddens.

Oye, Lindsey, I tried to get a reply back to you replete with my love of the dictionary, clarity, Sinclair and Steinbeck but I can't seem to get my simple paragraphs to take. I am sorry not to continue our discussion but of course, we will likely get more work done because of it:-) Cheers!